THE MOBILE-PHONE INDUSTRY and disability advocates are at a critical stage in negotiations over whether modifications should be made to a key benchmark in the Federal Communications Commission’s hearing-aid-compatibility mandate, with the nation’s largest carrier at risk of running afoul of next February’s deadline and calling for regulatory relief.
The FCC requires cellular operators by Feb. 18, 2008, to ensure half of their handset models for each air interface comply with a 2003-approved interference standard. The agency’s wireless staff is gathering fresh data for an upcoming report in which FCC members will be advised to consider doing more, less or nothing at all on HAC implementation.
Several dozen requests for extensions of prior HAC deadlines are pending before the FCC, and there is a petition asking the agency to determine whether mobile computing devices are covered by the HAC rule.
Preventing digital mobile phones from interfering with hearing aids is a far bigger challenge for GSM handsets than for CDMA devices. As such, AT&T Inc.-owned Cingular Wireless L.L.C., a GSM operator, is in a particularly precarious situation. T-Mobile USA Inc., the smallest of the four national cellular carriers, also offers GSM wireless service. No. 2 Verizon Wireless and No. 3 Sprint Nextel Corp. (iDEN phones aside) use CDMA technology. There is a separate FCC benchmark for telecoil-coupling hearing aid compatibility,
which disability groups decry as too timid.
Hearing disability groups-while reserving judgment on the HAC rule as it negotiates with the wireless industry-would have preferred a more ambitious FCC HAC decision in
2003. But it settled for a compromise at the time, acknowledging the technical challenges faced by the wireless industry. The hearing-impaired community nonetheless said it remains concerned whether accessibility to cutting-edge wireless telecommunications is where it should be. The number of people with hearing loss is estimated at 31 million and is predicted to reach 40 million by the end of the decade. More than 6 million people have hearing aids.
Life-and-death implications
“As Americans come to increasingly rely on mobile phones, the lack of ubiquitous hearing-aid compatibility is taking on an ever greater urgency,” a coalition of hearing disability organizations told the FCC. “In the workplace, reliance on mobile phones for certain jobs is steadily increasing. In public places, having a mobile phone is becoming essential as the number of available pay phones plummets. . These trends are going to continue and they are going to escalate. Their implications for access in emergency situations are indeed quite severe, because having an accessible wireless phone in an emergency can mean the difference between life and death.”
Disability advocates have been fighting since the mid-1990s to get cell phones covered by the Hearing Aid Compatibility Act of 1988. It was not until 2003 that the FCC set a timetable to do just that. They say cellphone association CTIA, led by Steve Largent since late 2003, has shown a genuine willingness to find solutions and that the FCC, under Chairman Kevin Martin, has been approachable on HAC matters.
CTIA did not submit an industry consensus position in the most recent public comment filing cycle, perhaps owing to the fact that its large members face different technical and competitive circumstances in meeting HAC regulations. CTIA said it will continue to avoid explicitly taking sides as negotiations over HAC benchmarks and implementation play out in the weeks ahead, but remains closely engaged in the FCC proceeding.
Cingular offered the FCC alternative approaches to the 50-percent interference-based HAC benchmark, noting the compliance challenge has become unpredictably more difficult because of manufacturing trends and handset design changes emphasizing thinness, bright big screens and metallic casing. All those unforeseen factors make HAC compliance more burdensome than it already was for it and other GSM carriers, Cingular said. As such, Cingular argues draconian adherence to next year’s 50-percent deadline could hurt the very societal segment group-hearing-aid users-that the FCC is attempting to help as well as the rest of cellphone users.
Fewer handset makers today
“Strict compliance with the existing requirement will likely have the perverse effect of limiting the total number of handsets available to all users. . This outcome is contrary to important statutory obligations. Increasing the 50-percent benchmark will skew the marketplace even further by compelling the discontinuance of non-HAC models and/or the delay of new HAC and non-HAC models alike and further limiting customer design choices,” Cingular told the FCC.
Cingular said mobile-phone HAC rules were based on an assumed marketplace of multiple handset vendors with a wide range of products for each air interface. That is not the marketplace of 2007, the No. 1 cellphone carrier said.
“Wireless service providers in the Untied States operate in a truly global market for handset products,” Cingular stated. “Most of the devices Cingular purchases from its vendors are designed for the international market, and various manufacturers are entering and exiting the U.S. as the market dictates. Particularly in light of growth in overseas markets, business survival no longer compels a handset manufacturer to provide a large suite of products in the U.S. market for every air interface.”
Moreover, Cingular said new technologies-such as the text accessibility plan it developed with input from the disability community-are giving hearing-aid users a new mode of wireless telecom accessibility.
The Alliance for Telecommuni-cations Industry Solutions, home to an HAC incubator program that measures performance of hearing aids and mobile phones, agrees that HAC rules for wireless devices need to be changed. ATIS said the industry standard upon which the HAC rule was based is imperfect and its revision remains a work progress. Hearing-aid vendors have been criticized by industry for not labeling their products-regulated by the Food and Drug Administration-with an interference immunity rating, as the FCC encouraged but didn’t require. Meantime, ATIS said FCC-regulated wireless carriers and manufacturers have publicized hearing-aid compatibility ratings, though disability groups claim the wireless industry should be doing lots more.
